2 ms·

Vienna has no homogeneous culture. It is a cultural melting pot comparable to New York City. This roots back to the multicultural Habsburg state. At the moment

by holri 10y ago

Vienna has no homogeneous culture. It is a cultural melting pot comparable to New York City. This roots back to the multicultural Habsburg state. At the moment Vienna grows by approx. 20000 people from all over the world by year. [1] The last years flat rent raised by 16%. If the city of Vienna would not build 13000 new cheap social flats every year, it would have problems like American cities. [1] https://www.wien.gv.at/statistik/bevoelkerung/images/bev-entwicklung-61-44.jpg https://www.wien.gv.at/statistik/bevoelkerung/images/bev-ent...

jomamaxx 10y ago
Vienna is nothing comparable to NYC in terms of cosmopolitain, NYC is of a different variety entirely. Have you been to both? About 85% of NYC residents are from out of country or out of state. Nobody is from New York. Everybody living in Vienna since the 'Habsburg era' may as well just be 'Germanic', as far as their culture is relative to something like 'Jamaican' or 'Puerto Rican' or 'Chinese' or 'Indian' as you have in NYC. Also - I'm afraid you might be missing something called 'market dynamics'. People don't 'move to a place' and then 'wait for housing'. If X number of people are 'moving' to a city every year, then it's because there are already places there to buy or rent. Builders make the assessment of how much the city is growing (as you say, rents are going up - that's a sign of demand) and then build homes and flats based on the types of demand - which enables more people to come. Given the vast differentiation in prices between city and 'out of city' homes - it's patently absurd for taxpayers to subsidize expensive city living for some people and not others. The 'expensive' part is not the 'flat' - it's the 'property'. The best thing is to let market dynamics have it's way, and have cheaper apartments in the periphery where there is less demand. Reasonable rent controls protects people from being kicked out. Average rent in Toronto is about $2K for a one room flat. A simple subway ride to the suburbs, and it's less than half that. A little further and it's 66% cheaper. Trying to control home prices is like trying to control the tide of the sea. It's pointless. For the small amount of those 'very marginalized' - yes, maybe they need their rent paid for, but that's another story. And if all those newcomers to Vienna require 'subsidized housing' (which I doubt) then Vienna will not exist in 50 years.
- holri 10y ago
  "Trying to control home prices is like trying to control the tide of the sea. It's pointless." Vienna has been controlling the home prices by building houses with great success for decades. [1] Vienna is the largest apartment owner in Europe and 220,000 community dwellings also the largest property management company in Europe. Hardly any other European city is so valued for their social housing as Vienna. https://www.wien.gv.at/english/housing/promotion/pdf/socialhous.pdf https://www.wien.gv.at/english/housing/promotion/pdf/socialh...
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "Vienna has been controlling the home prices by building houses with great success for decades. [1]" Vienna is controlling nothing. Vienna has failed to create global industries that attract value creators from around the world and other kinds of firms. If they did, there would be people getting wealthy on a global scale, 'screwing up the housing market', and there's little that could be done about it. Owning 200K homes is a terrible thing for the government to be doing - it's a relic of 20st century socialist thinking. It's incredibly inefficient. The remaining homes will be priced to 're-balance' the actual market dynamics in the region given the government intervention. This inefficiency amounts to a) waste and b) and unfair subsidy by taxpayers, especially those in the countryside to people living in state-owned homes on land which is really expensive. Again - it's better just to have basic regulations and smart developers, those people would be living in privately owned homes just a little further from city centre. Again - you simply cannot control the tides - the money you spend fighting it is wasted, and most government operations are considerably more inefficient than private ones, which leads to another form of waste. In Toronto (almost the size of Austria), nearly 1/3 of the 'special housing budget' goes to the staff working on the team. It would be more efficient (though unfair) just to directly subsidizes of lower income people and let the market decide how the spaces are allocated.
    - holri 10y ago
      Vienna is often rated as having the best quality of live in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve... The social (housing) politics for over 80 years now is a big factor for that outcome.

by holri 10y ago

jomamaxx 10y ago

Vienna is nothing comparable to NYC in terms of cosmopolitain, NYC is of a different variety entirely. Have you been to both? About 85% of NYC residents are from out of country or out of state. Nobody is from New York. Everybody living in Vienna since the 'Habsburg era' may as well just be 'Germanic', as far as their culture is relative to something like 'Jamaican' or 'Puerto Rican' or 'Chinese' or 'Indian' as you have in NYC. Also - I'm afraid you might be missing something called 'market dynamics'. People don't 'move to a place' and then 'wait for housing'. If X number of people are 'moving' to a city every year, then it's because there are already places there to buy or rent. Builders make the assessment of how much the city is growing (as you say, rents are going up - that's a sign of demand) and then build homes and flats based on the types of demand - which enables more people to come. Given the vast differentiation in prices between city and 'out of city' homes - it's patently absurd for taxpayers to subsidize expensive city living for some people and not others. The 'expensive' part is not the 'flat' - it's the 'property'. The best thing is to let market dynamics have it's way, and have cheaper apartments in the periphery where there is less demand. Reasonable rent controls protects people from being kicked out. Average rent in Toronto is about $2K for a one room flat. A simple subway ride to the suburbs, and it's less than half that. A little further and it's 66% cheaper. Trying to control home prices is like trying to control the tide of the sea. It's pointless. For the small amount of those 'very marginalized' - yes, maybe they need their rent paid for, but that's another story. And if all those newcomers to Vienna require 'subsidized housing' (which I doubt) then Vienna will not exist in 50 years.

holri 10y ago
"Trying to control home prices is like trying to control the tide of the sea. It's pointless." Vienna has been controlling the home prices by building houses with great success for decades. [1] Vienna is the largest apartment owner in Europe and 220,000 community dwellings also the largest property management company in Europe. Hardly any other European city is so valued for their social housing as Vienna. https://www.wien.gv.at/english/housing/promotion/pdf/socialhous.pdf https://www.wien.gv.at/english/housing/promotion/pdf/socialh...
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Vienna has been controlling the home prices by building houses with great success for decades. [1]" Vienna is controlling nothing. Vienna has failed to create global industries that attract value creators from around the world and other kinds of firms. If they did, there would be people getting wealthy on a global scale, 'screwing up the housing market', and there's little that could be done about it. Owning 200K homes is a terrible thing for the government to be doing - it's a relic of 20st century socialist thinking. It's incredibly inefficient. The remaining homes will be priced to 're-balance' the actual market dynamics in the region given the government intervention. This inefficiency amounts to a) waste and b) and unfair subsidy by taxpayers, especially those in the countryside to people living in state-owned homes on land which is really expensive. Again - it's better just to have basic regulations and smart developers, those people would be living in privately owned homes just a little further from city centre. Again - you simply cannot control the tides - the money you spend fighting it is wasted, and most government operations are considerably more inefficient than private ones, which leads to another form of waste. In Toronto (almost the size of Austria), nearly 1/3 of the 'special housing budget' goes to the staff working on the team. It would be more efficient (though unfair) just to directly subsidizes of lower income people and let the market decide how the spaces are allocated.
  - holri 10y ago
    Vienna is often rated as having the best quality of live in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve... The social (housing) politics for over 80 years now is a big factor for that outcome.